The Lady And The Duke

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All Rise...

The Charge

The long and the dull.

The Case

One must admire 82-year-old director Eric Rohmer for trying something quite
new at this stage of his lengthy career. Known for such films as My Night at
Maud's, Claire's Knee, and Chloe
in the Afternoon as well as several cycles of films, including four films in
the 1990s comprising his Tales of the Four Seasons, this time Rohmer
focuses on a tale of the French Revolution based on the memoirs of Grace
Elliott, an English lady caught up in the turbulent times of that Revolution.
The film is The Lady and the Duke (original French title L'Anglaise et
le duc) and the story revolves around former lovers, a English woman now
living in France with monarchist sympathies and the radical Duke of Orleans who
favours seeing some monarchist heads roll for the good of the country and also
to save his own skin.

It's not the subject matter that's new, however. It's the film's visual
effect. While interior scenes were all shot conventionally, Rohmer commissioned
paintings for all the outdoor locations in the story and then digitally combined
them with the live actors who had done their work in front of blue screens. The
result is unusual, inventive, and very surrealistic looking, never really losing
its impact throughout the film. It imparts a real feeling of an earlier era to
the whole story—perhaps closer to what our imaginations might expect Paris
to have looked at that time than would the sight of authentically constructed
exterior sets.

Unfortunately, the rest of the exercise falls victim to the boredom that has
afflicted much of Rohmer's work. Characters talk and talk and talk, and they
don't move much while they do so. Action does happen, but it virtually always is
off-stage and so we get more talk telling us what's occurred or philosophizing
about it instead of showing it. Most films today err on the action side, fearful
of falling astray of that malady of today's filmgoing times—the short
attention span, so perhaps this is Rohmer's response. If so, he's gone too far
the other way. Relative newcomer Lucy Russell and veteran Jean-Claude Dreyfuss
both wrestle valiantly with their title characters, but one senses even their
enthusiasm waning as the film trundles on and they're forced into another
protracted round of often pretentious dialogue.

The picture is a Sony Classics release made available on DVD by Columbia.
This is a very nice 1.78:1 anamorphic transfer. Interiors are very sharp,
bright, and clean. The exteriors featuring the artwork are a little more subdued
in colour intensity overall, as perhaps one might expect. There are occasional
indications of edge effects around people in front of the exterior paintings.
The Dolby Digital 5.0 surround audio is very good. Dialogue is rich and clear,
and there is some very effective use of the surrounds to deliver ambient sounds
such as distant gunfire. The sound track is in French with English and Spanish
subtitling available. The only supplements are the theatrical trailer for the
film and trailers for two other Sony Classics releases (Happy Days and Sunshine State).